She's Out of Control

They’ve made a sometimes funny, mostly media-referential movie without much real life; a high-tech, high-pro job that has a glamor-robot feel. Read full review

It's watchable enough in a nothing-better-to-do sort of way, but comparison with a contemporary movie, say, Uncle Buck, shows just how thin it really is. Read full review

SHE'S OUT OF CONTROL would have done far better in the TV ratings than it did at the box office. It has all the production pluses of national ad campaigns: smart art direction, lighting, and costume design; a catchy mix of old and new rock'n'roll on the soundtrack. Unfortunately, SHE'S OUT OF CONTROL also resembles commercials in that it hopes to appeal to everyone and basically endears itself to no one. Read full review

Somewhere lurking behind the scenes of She's Out of Control is the germ of a good idea. Despite some funny scenes, the sitcomish treatment of a father's anxiety over his teenage daughter's budding sexuality is mostly shallow and uneven. Read full review

Anyone who has watched television for even a night will be able to predict every scene in She's Out of Control with total accuracy. It is an extended version of familiar, bland sitcom situations, with Mr. Danza playing a smoother-edged version of his character on the endlessly running hit ''Who's the Boss?'' Read full review

An inspid comedy about Daddy and Daddy's little girl. It's an irksome, one-dimensional sitcom with smut. Read full review

The coarse material, from a screenplay by Seth Winston and Michael J. Nathanson, is roughed up even more by Dragoti's abrasive exaggeration, both of performance (there's a terrifying sequence in which Hicks finally gets her long dreamed-of engagement ring and goes into a frenzy of triumph and delight) and of visual style (visits to the office of sinister shrink Wallace Shawn are filmed in weird expressionist off-angles). [14 Apr 1989, p.D]

She's Out of Control is too insipid to take. [15 Apr 1989, p.E5]

With few exceptions, the dialogue's high point is when it's only dull. [15 Apr 1989, p.4D]

Dragoti's dire, dishonest, seldom humorous social comedy has all the nauseating hallmarks of a big-budget sitcom. Can't wait for the John Waters remake. Read full review

She's Out of Control is simultaneously so bizarre and so banal that it's a first: the first movie fabricated entirely from sitcom cliches and plastic lifestyles, without reference to any known plane of reality. Read full review